The Crystal Cathedral

The removal of a bishop's cathedra from a church deprives that church of its cathedral dignity, although often the name is retained in popular use, as for example at Antwerp, which was deprived of its bishop at the French Revolution as well as former cathedrals acquired by the Presbyterian Church of Scotland (which lacks episcopal structure). Technically, such churches are proto-cathedrals.
The title of "primate" was occasionally conferred on metropolitan bishops of sees of great dignity or importance, such as Canterbury, York and Rouen, whose cathedral churches remained simply metropolitical.
Lyon, where the cathedral church is still known as La Primatiale, and Lund in Sweden, may be cited as instances of churches which were really primatial. Lyon had the archbishops of Sens and Paris and their provincial dioceses subject to it until the French Revolution, and Lund had the archbishop of Uppsala and his province subject to it.
As with the title of primate, so also that of "patriarch" has been conferred on sees such as Venice and Lisbon, the cathedral churches of which are patriarchal in name alone. The Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, the cathedral church of Rome, is the only one in Western Europe which possesses a patriarchal character among Roman Catholics, since the Pope is the Patriarch of the Latin Rite church. However, in February 2006, Pope Benedict XVI ceased the use of the title "Patriarch of the West".